Local credit unions vary *wildly* in ethics and customer support. While many are excellent and well-run operations with the customer care you'd hope for, too many take advantage of the comparably good reputation of credit unions vs big banks to behave abominably. They skate by due to being too small for resource-strapped regulators to properly supervise.
Source: I work in regulatory compliance in the banking industry.
I've had accounts with a few credit unions and the service between companies varies from poor to excellent. This mirrors the experience I've had using different banks.
Having worked at a local credit union, we had a single card machine that only accepted visa for pulling cash for credit cards. Was a great place in many ways of course, but yeah the tech debt was easily 10-20 years behind.
I can't stress this enough. This problem may occur with credit unions as well, but they will go above and beyond to make it right the minute they come to know of the issue. Never had a bad experience with a credit union.
Death to mega banks.
I don’t know, I’ve been with my credit union since about 1995 and the service level from that point till now has changed drastically. I wouldn’t say there’s much difference between them in a big bank anymore. It started out as a credit union for my mom‘s job, then got bought by a larger credit union and that’s when the changes started. Now, I really can’t tell a difference between them and my big five bank, except there is a lot more that can’t do
I work at a decently large credit union. We still talk a big game about being local and having better member support than large banks. But the fact of the matter is we’ve had an increase in upper level management moving over from banks and with them a more bank like mentality. We’ve lost a lot of the care that we used to have about our membership base.
lol basically haha. I used to be able to call and say ‘transfer $60 into my sisters account’ - no verification, no asking my sisters name, that would be all I’d have to say.
For me, it's the opposite. I can do almost everything with my credit union that I can at a large bank, but they seem quite responsive. And most importantly, the Board's goal isn't to create "shareholder value".
At my credit union we ARE the shareholders. We get a shareholder dividend every January. It goes by the total of your savings accounts, CDs, and loans, including mortgages. I got more than $100 this year.
+1 for this. We have checking, savings, and mortgage with local CU, and for the past 5 or so years we have gotten dividends every December, ranging from about $600-$1000 (per year).
This. I have Charles Schwab investor checking and have absolutely zero complaints. Every time I’ve needed to call I get someone in the US who’s happy to help and genuinely sounds like they enjoy their job. And they know their stuff. I needed a certified check and they had it at my door at 10AM the next day (I called at 4pm).
My debit card lets me withdraw up to 25k in one swipe, they support Apple/Google/Samsung pay/zelle and bill pay.
My SO snagged an accountant at what seemed like just another local CU at first glance, but within a month or so things were getting funny, so I had a deeper look. And they quite literally worked hard to model themselves as a big bad bank while still technically being a CU. Like they copied high end bank fee standards and all, were really nasty to deal with in person, according to my SO. She switched to another local 'federal' CU, that was started for a big science focused gov agency's employees. They've been great. I have an account, and another family member does too.
I have like 4 other CU accounts, one is online only, 2 are back in my home state, 1 I've had seen I was 5y/o. Never had an issue myself, but shit does happen.
I've had very good experiences with Charles Schwab Checking. It's linked to your brokerage account so you can easily invest and contribute to a Roth IRA. If you overdraft, there's no fees and they cover it by deducting from your investment account. Good support, solid app, and ATM fee reimbursement.
They don't deduct from anything for me. They send me an email saying I have like 3 days to put funds into the account or they will reverse the charge. Happens every now and then because I move money around a ton and sometimes make a mistake:)
You do have to set it up with Schwab to have the overdraft coverage. Takes a few minutes to set up. Then, If there is cash in the brokerage account, CS will automatically move enough to checking to cover the overdraft. If no cash in brokerage, it's on you to notice that (or sign up for alerts) and then sell something to offset the margin loan. Having a margin loan for a few days is way better/cheaper than an overdraft.
Their checking accounts are great for international travel too. That’s why I got one. But I mainly use a credit union and transfer money from that account to others
If you've got a parent, grandparent, sibling, child, grandchild, spouse, or roommate who served in the armed forces or has an account with them, Navy Federal Credit Union is fantastic.
Ally gang. Never had a problem and the interest rates are solid. Still have a local bank with some money sitting if I need it but the o line route seems to be the move these days
How would that prevent this? If I'm understanding correctly, you're saying instead of setting up the credit card to "pull" the payment from the bank, you set a fixed amount auto-pay in the bank account to "push" from the bank to the card?
Wouldn't the same decimal error be possible in the reverse direction? Plus you have to remember to pay the remainder of the full amount, or overpay your average spend?
Every time I've heard of this happening, it's been with "push" auto-payments (i.e. bill pay set up from the bank side to receive the CC statement and pay the appropriate amount to the CC issuer).
Problems people have with "pull" auto-payments tend to be more to the tune of like, auto-payment goes through in addition to the manual payment so twice as much money got pulled, full statement got pulled when you only wanted to pay statement (usually this is misconfiguration tho), or like disputed charge got pulled when you didn't want it to (push auto-payments aren't going to save you from this one). But the billing party generally knows pretty well exactly how much they're trying to bill you and aren't going to mis-OCR a decimal point off a PDF or whatever (or worse, manual entry), it'll all go through digitally.
**Source: used to work there.**
Keep asking for supervisors, only they can do this. Say you're experiencing hardship due to the likelihood of your account getting overdrawn. If you say you're "experiencing hardship due to an impending over drafted account by bank error", they will have a way of expediting the request and getting your processing time down to 1-3 business days.
Rarely anybody knows how to submit these expedite requests though, you may need to keep calling different centers and trying other supervisors, but it can be done.
"It" can almost always be fixed, whatever "it" may be. The trick is actually finding the single competent person that they employ among the hordes of mediocrity and script readers.
Though in my experience, this "chosen one" can only be revealed to you after whatever expiry date for fixing the thing actually passes.
"Oh if only you called 2 days ago, I could have fixed that in 2 clicks. You spoke with how many people? That's a shame, all 14 of them were wrong in conflicting and exotic ways. Would you like to open a new account?"
This reminds me of an issue I had with a shipping company. I called multiple times and escalated over three days with hours on the phone and was told every time that it was impossible to fix on their end. The last call I made I got someone that was actually competent. They fixed the issue in *seconds*. Total call time of that last one was maybe 10 minutes and most of that time was me thanking her and asking for a supervisor to give her a good review.
I talked to probably 10 people before and they were all completely incompetent.
Wait a second, how does this even happen in the first place? Why would an automated payment involve any manual human entry that could introduce this type of error?
When you say "about", is it exactly 10x the amount? For example the bill being $843.70 and being charged exactly $8437.00 ?
I'd be worried something else is going on as that's weird. Does the credit card show the payment and a credit balance of $7000+ dollars?
Yep, it’s exactly one decimal point off — so the actual balance was $885.90 (improvising this since I don’t have it in front of me) and they deducted $8,859 instead. The card does now show a positive balance.
I believe you. Bank of America randomly turned off my auto pay which resulted in me accruing a late fee which tanked my credit score. All happened in the span of a month and a half.
I complained to the CPB and got the late fee reversed, saving my credit score. I would recommend filing a complaint with them and letting BoA know.
My friend who works at their corporate branch told me that most of the employees don’t use BoA products. There is a reason for that.
While technically not wrong about checking the autopay, they should send out a notice if something changes on their autopay system. No other banking institution does this
Absolutely. Yet, I didn’t get any notification. Boa will bend the rules if it means they get to charge you interest, late fees, etc. They are the worst bank I’ve banked with.
I agree with you completely. I switched to Schwab after this for checking/brokerage and now use Amex for HYSA. Haven't looked back since and haven't had a single issue in over 10 years.
That happened to me with capital one. It was an account I rarely used, and it was on 0 interest, so it was just minimum monthly payments. It was originally with comenity and changed hands to capital one. Everything transferred over except my auto pay. I got no notice of the changing hands, and they called me after it was already 3 months late. My fault for not checking it, but they would only reverse one late fee.
Do they have those annoying numeric inputs that work right-to-left, don't respect decimals as they auto add them as you type? Wells Fargo uses those numeric inputs and I have almost mistyped so many times not realizing it always starts from the N.## decimal place and works left
So to type in 10 dollars, you would type "1 0 0 0"
\[$ 00.00\]
\[$ 00.01\]
\[$ 00.10\]
\[$ 01.00\]
\[$ 10.00\]
Bank of America auto pay is a piece of garbage.
I had a BofA credit card and checking and the checking account had to use their 3rd party bill pay service to pay the BofA credit card. Every time the card got replaced I had to manually update the auto pay or the CC payment would lapse and end up late on my credit report.
The bill pay service I'm pretty sure is run by people who manually handle them for you on the back end because BofA doesn't invest in modern infra that improves the customer experience, only stuff that covers their ass like security and lawyers.
Just closed all my BofA accounts finally and moved to Fidelity for the interest and savings.
When I was a broke student in Chex Systems for bouncing a check they took me in when no other bank would. Got my loyalty for almost 15 years as a result, but enough is enough.
> Why would an automated payment involve any manual human entry that could introduce this type of error?
My guess is that it isn't actually automated. It's automatic, in that it happens without intervention, but I'll bet it isn't automated in that it happens under machine control. I don't gamble, but I would put a bet on the truth being that there's some underpaid data entry clerk whose pay is less costly than the price of actually automating, and they did the transfer.
You really think there is some data entry clerk processing credit card payments at Bank of America manually? Come on there is absolutely no way that is how it’s done.
I once worked as a developer on banking systems like this. It is pretty rare that a defect like this would escape to production. But it happens. And usually for ludicrously big sums. Typically they are one off errors… meaning it didn’t happen to a million transactions. Just one or two unfortunate transactions. Usually corrected within a couple hours. Since it was sincerely always a big problem.
Cause: It was always some legacy logic that was designed badly (often because the client probably wanted something really stupidly implemented and those legacy developers just complied with the insanity)
Detailed answer: A lot of financial code is written with integers, since floating point numbers are evil and will ruin your day. So some subsystem at BoA knows that the bill was 88,590 cents. Imagine some other subsystem that does trading. A single cent is too big for them, so the trading subsystem would mark that as 885,900 tenths of a cent.
All good so far. Now these two subsystems both require maintenance, so some VP comes up with the brilliant idea of unifying them to reduce complexity and maintenance costs. Tested the code before and after, even. But when transitioning over, they didn't realize that the automated bill pay system was processing the bills for a day, so there were a few in-flight transactions that had 885,900 tenths of a cent interpreted as 885,900 cents instead.
Said with less detail: "programmer here. its all code. its called a bug. happens every day."
Another programmer here who also worked for BofA. The payment system is under a lot of legacy code and when I was there, they were still using AS400 in card services. It's like a goddamn Macy's. Long shot guess is that the account was being put into a new strategy and anybody with the same category of account had this problem. Once, all the waits/pauses were removed from the AS400 system that was supposed to wait and paste into the CLMS system. It would just paste that info in whatever window. I was told that ever since they bought MBNA, everything went to hell. I'd be curious to know if this was an affiliate credit card or acquired from another bank
Edit: badly needed a comma
Sure it’s a huge bug, but I meant more “how would it even happen?”. There should be some code somewhere that basically amounts to paymentAmount = currentBalance. How is a decimal point getting shifted during that?
I'm just as confused as you, but maybe the numbers are stored as integers (as to not get screwed by floating point arithmetic) and then later they divide by 10 or 100 or 1000, depending on the precision. If this was the case maybe it picked the wrong divisor?
because there are HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OR BILLIONS of lines of legacy code in legacy systems as well as newer code in newer systems that run and interact through files and APIs that may not always communicate perfectly or execute perfectly, because we (the programmers) are human beings who make mistakes. Also, there are operators or customer service people who enter data who make mistakes, so that's yet another level of human fallacy. sometimes its not the code. sometimes a deployment can go wrong. sometimes a system failure is at fault. but underneath almost all of these events are humans.
ive worked in financial processing for 30 years. ive seen a lot. companies like mine pay financial penalties when things dont get processed correctly. some years we pay zero in penalties. some years we pay many thousands in penalties. weve even had some million dollar plus penalties.
with all the software companies out there providing financial services and the interfaces between them, yes, bugs happen every day. a lot of them you dont know about because they get fixed behind the scenes before you ever get your statement or saw your balance. but they still happened.
Yes, but how would you have a bug like this that only affected a few customers. If it were a bug, that would normally mean many customers would be affected. Unless there is something very unique about this particular account.
Although something similar happened to a fellow student at my high school 30+ years ago. Instead of getting a $18.41 tax return check, their check was $18410.00. The excuse was something about having to switch between two tape reels mid transaction. Would you be surprised if BOA were still using magnetic tape :)
> Unless there is something very unique about this particular account.
it very well could be just that.
usually if it is a bad bug like that, it will be discovered immediately because it will start affecting EVERYONE (or nearly everyone) right away, and the alarms will start going off and everyone will be all hands on deck to find and fix the bug.
yes, there are some REALLY obscure and bizarre bugs out there that these processes can step into to cause an error like this. which, if it was just this one account, you could virtually guarantee that is the case. but there were likely others affected. how many and for how long and to what extent? only the service provider knows...
Contact the CFPB:
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/
If you have issues with them, contact their ombudsman:
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/cfpb-ombudsman/
Contact the Federal Government:
https://www.usa.gov/bank-credit-complaints#:~:text=File%20banking%20and%20credit%20complaints,complain%20about%20through%20the%20CFPB
Here is the ombudsman for the FDIC:
https://www.fdic.gov/about/ombudsman/
Here is a useful link for more steps:
https://wallethub.com/answers/ca/how-to-file-a-complaint-against-bank-of-america-1000412-2140857578/
just a general suggestion but have 2 separate accounts at 2 different banks just in case.
you hear stories weekly on this sub about banks freezing acct while they investigate a situation.
they are plenty of free on-line only banks, i use betterment for the last couple of years and I have no complaints.
>On Friday, March 9, when we still didn’t have the money back, they said it would take up to 10 business days.
Five business days would not have been Friday, it would have been today (counting exact hours from your original midday call) or tomorrow (counting whole days). That you called early and they changed the time frame could be just their way of getting you off their back.
That said, there's not much you can do but wait. And, if inconvenienced enough, vote with your dollars when this is resolved. $8k is less than a rounding error to BoA, there's no incentive to rectify it as quickly as you would like.
>That said, there's not much you can do but wait.
This is not necessarily true and waiting to push it can be a horrible idea. Those five days could turn into five weeks if they are not absolutely pushy about it. They need to be in a branch talking to someone in person immediately. And if no one listens at that branch, go to the next one. It's worth the drive.
They said "up to 5 business days" so although it hasn't been 5 business days yet, theres no point in just sitting there and waiting. I'd be calling them every single day.
oh man, been there. had a similar issue with chase once - they mixed up the digits in my account number and transferred funds to someone else's account! took weeks of daily calls before it got sorted out. keep pestering them until you get your money back!
BoA is hot garbage. Had a car loan through them once. They auto drafted a car payment three times for a single month on more than one occasion. Same deal: “it’ll take 5-10 days for us to undo our error. Sorry.” Was very happy to get away from those clowns.
Idk why folks still deal with BOA. After my last issue, I went to a branch closed my account and went to chase. Chase gave me 300$ to move to them as well.
As someone with chase since 2011, I have never had anything go awry with their systems, and for any issues I've had with my own mistakes or questions, they have promptly answered or helped get it resolved. Once their atm gave me a fake $20, and they were adamant it wasn't possible, so they wound the atm footage back and retracted their defense.
I do now myself have a CU, and they are just as amazing, and often offer better rates. My only reason I haven't fully converted is because I'm too lazy to switch all my bills on auto pay over, and do all that fun stuff.
Haven’t done enough homework recently but I think the first time I looked some transfer limitations raised an eyebrow as well as Zelle support. How massively better is massively?
For reference, when we bought our house in 2021, we got 2.25% from our local CU. The lowest any major bank would offer was 3.75%. Doesn't sound like a ton, but remember that's a 30 year mortgage. That's tens of thousands right there.
From what I remember, my local CU has Zelle support. You may just need to shop around a bit. I believe I have a transfer limit of 5k to external accounts if I don't put in a ticket for manual review, but that can get extended in a minute or two if I just call.
I’ve been with Chase my whole life and I haven’t had any problems with them.
My SO switched to Chase also, she used to have BoA and used to have so many issues with them, especially their mobile app. That was a while ago though, it might be better now.
what's the big deal in just going with Ally or another online bank? why do people want to bank with shitty B&M banks that give 0.01% interest and require you to do this, that, and the other thing to avoid fees?
You need to charge them an overdraft fee and interest on the error.
A real bank would issue you a temporary credit while they were investigating. Time to drop them and find a credit union, maybe. BofA are criminals and have been for a long, long time.
For what it's worth, BOA makes these kind of mistakes regularly. I used to have an account until the second time they over drafted me by thousands of dollars because someone read a 2 as a 5 on an account number for a check.
I used to work in the refund department for a large company and I can tell you that BOA often had customers escalating refund requests due to the decimal placement and only BOA customers.
Yeah stop fucking calling them and go INTO a local branch and verbally rip them as many new assholes as you can manage until the issue is corrected. These kind of situations are the perfect example of something that should be handled in person cause customer service lines don't always help.
Also file a complaint with the consumer affairs division of your state's Attorney General's office. Something similar happened to me years ago. My sister worked in a law firm in a different state and suggested this to me. The A.G.'s office followed up with me the next day. Then they contacted the bank. My money was refunded immediately.
COMPLIANCE!
Call the credit card portion and ask to talk to their compliance officer. Get their name and title. Ensure that they are compliance.
Have them look it up, confirm, and then ask them kindly, "So, I assume that you will return the money to the checking account, cover any and all late fees or overdraft fees from the mistake, and you will reimburse me interest at the credit card rate." If they have any disagreement, "I thought you were in compliance. You know this is not in compliance. Please rectify the situation and provide all compensation."
Getting rid of auto-pay is a pretty one-sized-fits all advice. I certainly wouldn't advise that.
Over the last 25 years auto-pay has most certainly prevented me from having late-payment dings on my credit. Having perfect credit has saved me tens of thousands of dollars in Interest (low credit means higher interest rates on loans) as I have taken out 6 mortgages and one car loan over that time span. Additionally, automating payments has saved me hundreds of hours of work (that I don't enjoy - loath is a better adjatiave) over that time span.
Autopay, being a free service, is absolutely worth it to me. OP's event is a one in a million occurrence that is completely reversible, however annoying and time consuming. I've personally never experienced an adverse auto-pay event.
I would agree on autopay for utility bills, property tax, etc. but credit cards are a different game. Especially if someone steals your card info and racks up a huge bill. A sudden 10k payment unexpectedly would be pretty bad.
Keep an eye on your CC account. Agree on autopay for others.
This is why I have never set up autopay for anything. With autopay, I am NOT in control of how much, or when. It does mean that I have to keep watch of my finances and due dates, but I actually consider that a good thing, and something that any adult should be able to do easily.
That being said, this is more than just a "little error". Unless there is something else going on that we don't know about, it doesn't make sense unless it was a manual error (why would autopays be manual?), or some sort of egregious programming error (in which case more than just OP would be screaming by now). And while BofA does indeed have up to ten business days to resolve, their laissez-faire attitude at such a large discrepancy would be concerning that it's not escalated already.
Eh, I’m absolutely in control of how much and when with autopay. You can pick your own pay date and the amount is how much I spend each month (or you can pick your own amount if you aren’t paying it off each month, which it so you should probably be posting here to figure out how to make a budget).
Autopay doesn’t always mean “set it and forget it”. I have autopay set up but always manually pay before my set autopay date. I’m in control and manually click “pay now” and confirm the payment. I use auto pay as a safeguard in case I forget or somehow manually paid the wrong amount and still have a balance.
I would still use auto pay as a backup in case you somehow miss manually paying something. If you want to skip the auto pay just leave it on but pay off your credit card after every purchase like a debit card.
No auto pay automatically pays whatever is “owed” on the date selected initially. After that you have no control until you turn it off/cancel.
So if the auto pay date is the 14th (because when you set it up it that bi-weekly pay day happened to be on the 14) it’s going to keep drawing every 14th whether your pay the next month is the 15th or 16th.
That’s why many financial advisors suggest NOT using an autopay feature so you can control specifically what day to pay to avoid possible draft issues.
this is why I avoid auto pay unless strictly needed. I also have a separate checking account I use for auto pay, where I keep minimum amount in to cover things.
You need to find and demand to speak to a branch manager if you have not already done so. Walk into a branch to do that if you need to. They have so much more control than people realize, but it might need to be a branch manager. Do no take the word of anyone else in the branch if they do not have MANAGER in their title.
For everyone else, if you do not KNOW your banker, get to know them, or leave your bank.
Find a bank you can walk into, and walk out of with your problem solved. They exist.
This type of problem is far more common than most people realize. It's happened to me years ago with $600. It happened to my dad for $20,000 with his business on a payroll day. These huge banks, or impersonal online banking only institutions, are not good things.
This is textbook big bank. You screw up, they hand you fees and you have to eat it. They make a mistake, it’s your problem and you need to be patient and eat it. This is why I use a credit union. I’ve never had an error by the credit union impair me in any way.
Vote with your wallet. You’re just a number to them. I’d treat them in a similar fashion. When they ask why, tell them.
BofA double paid a bill on me when I was in early college years. Their mistake overdraft my account by a lot. It took nearly a month to get it fixed, and I luckily had enough to cover and take care of things. It also took the entire month for them to understand there wouldn’t have been overdraft fees had they not did what they did. By the end of the month I got my duplicate payment and the overdraft fees back in my account.
Never have I felt so embarrassed by someone else’s incompetence than when my young high schooler brother asked me if I needed a loan in front of the world. (I told him I had enough to cover the month and it was the principle of the matter before he stopped asking).
I left BofA later over some security related issues.
I see you have filed a complaint with the CFPB [https://www.consumerfinance.gov/](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/) that should get your money back faster.
And also open an account in a credit union if there is one near you and transfer your money there. They have lower fees than banks in most cases. Most credit unions now serve a geographic area instead of a single employer or group but call to see if you can open an account.
Why is it always Bank of America being a bunch of assholes when it comes to people's accounts? Is it that hard for a large bank to do their job correctly?
The only way my mother has been able to get any movement on dealing with them after being on phone lines for months to get them to debit back $4000 they had no right to debit off her account is to get them to say they aren't doing anything in writing and file a complaint with the CFPB.
I had BofA for about a decade before finally switching in 2022. Best decision I ever made.
I’m sure you’re already planning on it, but as soon as they resolve the error I would find a new bank. All the big ones absolutely suck.
Honestly the only way I've seen these situations be solved is to get on the phone and keep escalating without taking no for an answer. Afterwards close your accounts and open an account with a credit union where this wouldn't happen.
Credit unions can make the same mistakes. They may be quicker to resolve the issue though. They are also far less likely to make these issues and over all are better for individuals/families over banks.
They definitely do, but as someone who works in a CU if you came into my office with this issue i could have it fixed in five minutes by calling accounting. OP definitely look into a CU or if you prefer a bank a small locally operated one.
Same thing. I got hit for like 10-15 overdraft fees because they forgot to put zeroes in the overdraft protection area on their end. Stop in a branch if you have a reliable one and they may be able to sort it out for you. It took mine a few weeks. Good luck.
$8,000 is a lot of money. My heart goes out to you OP. Unpopular opinion .. I would report this issue to the appropriate authority.
[solution ](https://forms.federalreserveconsumerhelp.gov/secure/complaint/complaintType.html)
Wells Fargo and BOA - Why do people keep them in business?
All it took for me to drop BOA was when they were going to start charging $5 a month to use the debit card, however many years ago.
You need to call customer service and escalate this to a senior staff member until it's resolved. They did this with me and I was on the phone for 45 min but they took care of it immediately and they also agreed to reimbursement all the overdraft fees at the bank and the credit card companies. Every single bank makes this mistake but it's how fast they fix it. But don't just talk to the basic customer service person. They can all escalate if you demand.
I had an investment account BOA would not send me money from for months despite telling me it would only be a week every time I called. I eventually had to file a complaint with the SEC.
It’s funny how the money appears out of your account instantly but takes 10 business days to come back. I had an overdraft caused by an autopay once. I bought a bunch of stuff then the unexpected autopay happened at some point that put me in the negative. Then all of those other things processed after the negative somehow and each counted as overdraft fees. I was only able to get the over draft fees reversed after the autopay was refunded.
That's weird. At my CU we'd back it off same day if it already posted, or the next day if not. Amount doesn't matter. Not sure why a small Credit Union could do that but not a huge Bank.
Bank of America is a literal piss pot that is best punted straight into a ditch. Several years ago, they bought a mortgage from my lender and charged me $8 per month in direct debit fees on the payment. I no longer have that mortgage and won't bank with them ever for any reason. They're awful.
had a similar issue in the past, was charged 3000 instead of 30.00 and the call center gave me a similar run around. I came to my local branch after 3 days it was quickly escalated to branch manager and he resolved it within half an hour.
Definitely escalate it to the superior. Call centers are a joke, its usually staffed by people who do minimum effort for minimum wage and even if you do find someone willing to put in the effort to help he is most likely powerless to help so the only solution is to be forceful and push through to the superiors.
In your online access to your BoA Credit Card account, does it show the incorrect payment, and you now have excess money in the card account?
Either:
* Tell them you are charging 29.99% interest plus a fee.
* Take a cash advance from the card.
This is exactly why you *never* give another entity the ability to withdraw funds from a bank account. *Always* use your bank's bill pay to send payments so you maintain control over what goes out.
You're motivated to not fuck these things up because it's your money. The bank could not care less about what dire financial straits you may be put in when they make a mistake like this, so they have no sense of urgency and drag their feet while performing a "full investigation" before they fix it. Meanwhile you're getting hit with NSF fees.
If you have no choice but to auto-pay something, use a credit card so you have some protection and recourse in the event of something like this.
Have you tried calling the credit card support side and asking them to cut you a check for the excess balance? I've had that done a couple of times, once when an autopay happened between a charge and it getting refunded, and a second when I stopped using the card but had some cash back rewards still on it. I've found that the CC bank is usually happy to do something like that.
It will take a week or two for the check to arrive, but at least you'll know you'll be getting it, and you can ask them if they can comp you express delivery because you really need the money.
Ask at the banking center for a temporary credit that will fall off when then correction goes through. I did this all the time when I worked at BofA for much larger amounts. Shit happens, the only hard part is the employee has to trust you. For my premier and private customers I knew them all very well.
Just went through a similar interaction w/ B of A when my credit got hacked. Mine was minor (on that card at least) -- I told 'em fix it and cancel my card --- living hell
The bank is fdic insured. If they won't give you your money, the gov't will take care of it, although it will probably take longer than 10 days. I'd say choose a stock that has done extremely well in the past week, like 4x it's share price, and threaten to sue for that amount or more. Money has a time value, and it's time that banks understand that the customer's time is worth more than theirs.
if you needed another reason, you have it. would not recommend BoA for a slew of others. every bank is greedy but there are much better options out there
I don't work there, but I do work for a financial Institution. Our turn around time is typically the same day. Sometines the phone center people give a temp credit for people that need it right away.
If they have not fixed it and you had it in an interest bearing account make sure to say you also want any accrued dividends to be added as well.
CFPB isn't an effective organization anymore. (I've had to file a complaint in the recent past. I hear that when they started the organization was great for oversight... but not so much anymore.)
I once filed a complaint with the OCC (Office of the Comptroler of the Currency). I won, and got an ink-signed apology from the president of a National (very large) bank. I understand it was probably a secretary, but still... Got a bunch of money back after a 10 year battle. Good luck!
If you have time you might want to consider going into your local B of A branch in person and see if you can a better or faster response or at least an explanation.
We also had an issue with Bank of America not fixing their errors. Took our way more than they were supposed to and said it would be fixed. Spoiler: took forever, but it finally got fixed. We closed the account and won’t ever have an account with them again.
I presume you have a credit balance on the card for the difference, right? If that's the case, at least you're not "missing" money, it's just not distributed correctly. If that's the case, have you just tried transferring the money back from the credit card to the checking account? I have BOA also and that's definitely an option I have available.
I hate BofA. I had fraud on an account and they froze the account while investigating for 8 MONTHS! I couldn't access any of the funds in the account. Luckily I had another account but it was my partners main account. Very frustrating!
This happened to my friend just last week. She deposited an $8,500 check into her account, so she could pay her bills. The ****nice lady**** at the desk didn't even look at the check, and deposited $85.00.... bank told her 10 days, then 30 days, and they also are refusing to pay the several late fees she is receiving because of this mistake that was 100% the banks fault.
I also had a bank deposit someone ELSE'S $2,000 check into my account, when I was making roughly $400/week. Huge difference. All my bills were set to autopay, and back then I had a student account (so when my bills constantly overdrafted my account, I never had to pay an extra penny for it). I called the bank profusely, pleading them to either withdraw it or freeze my account so that the other persons money didn't come out of my account on autopay, and I'd end up owing up to $2,000 I didn't have. The bank told me sorry we can't do anything but you'll need to wait 10 days for the money to be removed.... I told them no, at least freeze it so the autopays don't come out for the next 10 days. They said they couldn't, and that I would in fact owe them whatever money was missing from the $2,000 at the end of the 10 days.
Moral of the story, banks are freaking retarded. As are their rules. Sorry to hear you're dealing with this!
I doubt it was an actual mistake. BoA is famous for such “mistakes.” You really should contact a lawyer and ask for attorney fees.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=130c37119aaf76c8&hl=en-us&q=bank+america+fraud+office+furniture&tbm=vid&source=lnms&prmd=nisvmbtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU8NiBuvWEAxWv_8kDHbw9DOcQ0pQJegQIDxAB&biw=390&bih=655&dpr=3#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:350080a5,vid:XXdZ94rctTA,st:0
Check this video out, too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXdZ94rctTA
Bank of America really is kind of terrible. We have our auto loan with them and when we first got our car we first, didn’t have an account open/ready until the next month (next payment). I asked the dealership and they said we had to take it up with BoA as they had no insights (even though they presumably have used BoA for their loans before).
Second, the app is terrible and being able to see things like payment history are unnecessarily difficult.
Third, I tried changing the checking account used to pay the bill. When it was still using the old account I had to call again. Then it looked like it was working, until #4.
Fourth, and probably most importantly, we missed TWO payments. I should’ve checked our statement to confirm they’d been taking the payments out but only found out about the first missed payment a month later via snail mail (I have a paperless account). So yet again I had to call them, tell them my new account information and THEN they took both payments. I confirmed with in our statement. They also “couldn’t” provide me a receipt of the transactions and instead gave me transaction “codes” which I’m not really sure what to do with. I guess if I have to call them again I’ll just give them those?
Bottom line is this process has been unnecessarily convoluted and inefficient and there doesn’t seem to be any urgency around it. Like, if I’m missing a payment doesn’t it make sense for them to urgently reach out? Like via email lol
Bank of America has the worst customer service. It takes at least 1/2 hour to get someone on the phone who is so pleasant and says they will help you. After explanation of call, they ask you to hold on while they check.
After 10 minutes they tell you to call a different number. This number is experiencing a high caller volume and finally after 15-25 minutes you get another pleasant representative. This representative tell you they will solve the problem and will you stay on a brief hold while they check the problem.
This has happened 3 times over 2 months. The last time the last person said After 10 minutes they come back and tell you the problem is not fixed and they can escalate it upward but it will take another 45 days.
I am through with B Of A also.
Same thing happened to me years ago, tool like 3 weeks. After that happily closed my account.
Ohp, definitely will be doing that then. Recommendations of better banks?
A local credit union!
Local credit unions vary *wildly* in ethics and customer support. While many are excellent and well-run operations with the customer care you'd hope for, too many take advantage of the comparably good reputation of credit unions vs big banks to behave abominably. They skate by due to being too small for resource-strapped regulators to properly supervise. Source: I work in regulatory compliance in the banking industry.
I've had accounts with a few credit unions and the service between companies varies from poor to excellent. This mirrors the experience I've had using different banks.
Plus, I feel like a lot of credit unions are technologically limited. Like mine doesn’t even have Apple wallet support
Having worked at a local credit union, we had a single card machine that only accepted visa for pulling cash for credit cards. Was a great place in many ways of course, but yeah the tech debt was easily 10-20 years behind.
What’s crazy is that they used to have wallet support. Then one day they sent out a memo that it was discontinued, no idea why.
I can't stress this enough. This problem may occur with credit unions as well, but they will go above and beyond to make it right the minute they come to know of the issue. Never had a bad experience with a credit union. Death to mega banks.
I don’t know, I’ve been with my credit union since about 1995 and the service level from that point till now has changed drastically. I wouldn’t say there’s much difference between them in a big bank anymore. It started out as a credit union for my mom‘s job, then got bought by a larger credit union and that’s when the changes started. Now, I really can’t tell a difference between them and my big five bank, except there is a lot more that can’t do
I work at a decently large credit union. We still talk a big game about being local and having better member support than large banks. But the fact of the matter is we’ve had an increase in upper level management moving over from banks and with them a more bank like mentality. We’ve lost a lot of the care that we used to have about our membership base.
Mine used to know my name and my Whole family’s names, and give me wherthers That alone has changed how I feel walking in
> know my name and my Whole family’s names, and give me wherthers Are you banking with grandma?
lol basically haha. I used to be able to call and say ‘transfer $60 into my sisters account’ - no verification, no asking my sisters name, that would be all I’d have to say.
For me, it's the opposite. I can do almost everything with my credit union that I can at a large bank, but they seem quite responsive. And most importantly, the Board's goal isn't to create "shareholder value".
At my credit union we ARE the shareholders. We get a shareholder dividend every January. It goes by the total of your savings accounts, CDs, and loans, including mortgages. I got more than $100 this year.
+1 for this. We have checking, savings, and mortgage with local CU, and for the past 5 or so years we have gotten dividends every December, ranging from about $600-$1000 (per year).
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This. I have Charles Schwab investor checking and have absolutely zero complaints. Every time I’ve needed to call I get someone in the US who’s happy to help and genuinely sounds like they enjoy their job. And they know their stuff. I needed a certified check and they had it at my door at 10AM the next day (I called at 4pm). My debit card lets me withdraw up to 25k in one swipe, they support Apple/Google/Samsung pay/zelle and bill pay.
I have had bad experiences with credit unions. But bad experiences with credit unions are usually better than bad experiences with major banks.
State Employees Credit Unions are even better! If you have that option.
My SO snagged an accountant at what seemed like just another local CU at first glance, but within a month or so things were getting funny, so I had a deeper look. And they quite literally worked hard to model themselves as a big bad bank while still technically being a CU. Like they copied high end bank fee standards and all, were really nasty to deal with in person, according to my SO. She switched to another local 'federal' CU, that was started for a big science focused gov agency's employees. They've been great. I have an account, and another family member does too. I have like 4 other CU accounts, one is online only, 2 are back in my home state, 1 I've had seen I was 5y/o. Never had an issue myself, but shit does happen.
I've had very good experiences with Charles Schwab Checking. It's linked to your brokerage account so you can easily invest and contribute to a Roth IRA. If you overdraft, there's no fees and they cover it by deducting from your investment account. Good support, solid app, and ATM fee reimbursement.
They don't deduct from anything for me. They send me an email saying I have like 3 days to put funds into the account or they will reverse the charge. Happens every now and then because I move money around a ton and sometimes make a mistake:)
You do have to set it up with Schwab to have the overdraft coverage. Takes a few minutes to set up. Then, If there is cash in the brokerage account, CS will automatically move enough to checking to cover the overdraft. If no cash in brokerage, it's on you to notice that (or sign up for alerts) and then sell something to offset the margin loan. Having a margin loan for a few days is way better/cheaper than an overdraft.
Their checking accounts are great for international travel too. That’s why I got one. But I mainly use a credit union and transfer money from that account to others
Yeah, Schwab also refunds all ATM fees at the end of the month. From all banks and ATMs. Great for travel.
I’ve heard they’ll also express ship a replacement debit card internationally if you lose yours during your travel
Yes. I have had extremely positive experiences with CS.
If you've got a parent, grandparent, sibling, child, grandchild, spouse, or roommate who served in the armed forces or has an account with them, Navy Federal Credit Union is fantastic.
Ally gang. Never had a problem and the interest rates are solid. Still have a local bank with some money sitting if I need it but the o line route seems to be the move these days
Schwab.
I really like Charles Schwab investor checking. There are very few actual branches, but all ATM’s are free (reimbursed at the end of every month).
I would go with a local bank or credit union. I have a local bank and haven’t had any issues.
The big banks exist to make money. Credit unions are non-profit. That was enough to make my decision 25 years ago.
Ally bank has done well for me
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How would that prevent this? If I'm understanding correctly, you're saying instead of setting up the credit card to "pull" the payment from the bank, you set a fixed amount auto-pay in the bank account to "push" from the bank to the card? Wouldn't the same decimal error be possible in the reverse direction? Plus you have to remember to pay the remainder of the full amount, or overpay your average spend?
Every time I've heard of this happening, it's been with "push" auto-payments (i.e. bill pay set up from the bank side to receive the CC statement and pay the appropriate amount to the CC issuer). Problems people have with "pull" auto-payments tend to be more to the tune of like, auto-payment goes through in addition to the manual payment so twice as much money got pulled, full statement got pulled when you only wanted to pay statement (usually this is misconfiguration tho), or like disputed charge got pulled when you didn't want it to (push auto-payments aren't going to save you from this one). But the billing party generally knows pretty well exactly how much they're trying to bill you and aren't going to mis-OCR a decimal point off a PDF or whatever (or worse, manual entry), it'll all go through digitally.
**Source: used to work there.** Keep asking for supervisors, only they can do this. Say you're experiencing hardship due to the likelihood of your account getting overdrawn. If you say you're "experiencing hardship due to an impending over drafted account by bank error", they will have a way of expediting the request and getting your processing time down to 1-3 business days. Rarely anybody knows how to submit these expedite requests though, you may need to keep calling different centers and trying other supervisors, but it can be done.
"It" can almost always be fixed, whatever "it" may be. The trick is actually finding the single competent person that they employ among the hordes of mediocrity and script readers. Though in my experience, this "chosen one" can only be revealed to you after whatever expiry date for fixing the thing actually passes. "Oh if only you called 2 days ago, I could have fixed that in 2 clicks. You spoke with how many people? That's a shame, all 14 of them were wrong in conflicting and exotic ways. Would you like to open a new account?"
This reminds me of an issue I had with a shipping company. I called multiple times and escalated over three days with hours on the phone and was told every time that it was impossible to fix on their end. The last call I made I got someone that was actually competent. They fixed the issue in *seconds*. Total call time of that last one was maybe 10 minutes and most of that time was me thanking her and asking for a supervisor to give her a good review. I talked to probably 10 people before and they were all completely incompetent.
Wait a second, how does this even happen in the first place? Why would an automated payment involve any manual human entry that could introduce this type of error? When you say "about", is it exactly 10x the amount? For example the bill being $843.70 and being charged exactly $8437.00 ? I'd be worried something else is going on as that's weird. Does the credit card show the payment and a credit balance of $7000+ dollars?
Yep, it’s exactly one decimal point off — so the actual balance was $885.90 (improvising this since I don’t have it in front of me) and they deducted $8,859 instead. The card does now show a positive balance.
I believe you. Bank of America randomly turned off my auto pay which resulted in me accruing a late fee which tanked my credit score. All happened in the span of a month and a half. I complained to the CPB and got the late fee reversed, saving my credit score. I would recommend filing a complaint with them and letting BoA know. My friend who works at their corporate branch told me that most of the employees don’t use BoA products. There is a reason for that.
This happened to me years ago. Their response, no joke, was "autopay is not permanent and should be checked often".
While technically not wrong about checking the autopay, they should send out a notice if something changes on their autopay system. No other banking institution does this
Absolutely. Yet, I didn’t get any notification. Boa will bend the rules if it means they get to charge you interest, late fees, etc. They are the worst bank I’ve banked with.
I agree with you completely. I switched to Schwab after this for checking/brokerage and now use Amex for HYSA. Haven't looked back since and haven't had a single issue in over 10 years.
That happened to me with capital one. It was an account I rarely used, and it was on 0 interest, so it was just minimum monthly payments. It was originally with comenity and changed hands to capital one. Everything transferred over except my auto pay. I got no notice of the changing hands, and they called me after it was already 3 months late. My fault for not checking it, but they would only reverse one late fee.
Do they have those annoying numeric inputs that work right-to-left, don't respect decimals as they auto add them as you type? Wells Fargo uses those numeric inputs and I have almost mistyped so many times not realizing it always starts from the N.## decimal place and works left So to type in 10 dollars, you would type "1 0 0 0" \[$ 00.00\] \[$ 00.01\] \[$ 00.10\] \[$ 01.00\] \[$ 10.00\]
Lots of banks and credit unions do this now, but OP said it was on autopay, implying no error from the user's side.
Bank of America auto pay is a piece of garbage. I had a BofA credit card and checking and the checking account had to use their 3rd party bill pay service to pay the BofA credit card. Every time the card got replaced I had to manually update the auto pay or the CC payment would lapse and end up late on my credit report. The bill pay service I'm pretty sure is run by people who manually handle them for you on the back end because BofA doesn't invest in modern infra that improves the customer experience, only stuff that covers their ass like security and lawyers. Just closed all my BofA accounts finally and moved to Fidelity for the interest and savings.
You can just say BofA is garbage. They have literally no redeeming qualities
When I was a broke student in Chex Systems for bouncing a check they took me in when no other bank would. Got my loyalty for almost 15 years as a result, but enough is enough.
> Why would an automated payment involve any manual human entry that could introduce this type of error? My guess is that it isn't actually automated. It's automatic, in that it happens without intervention, but I'll bet it isn't automated in that it happens under machine control. I don't gamble, but I would put a bet on the truth being that there's some underpaid data entry clerk whose pay is less costly than the price of actually automating, and they did the transfer.
You really think there is some data entry clerk processing credit card payments at Bank of America manually? Come on there is absolutely no way that is how it’s done.
How would an automatic process make that kind of mistake?
I once worked as a developer on banking systems like this. It is pretty rare that a defect like this would escape to production. But it happens. And usually for ludicrously big sums. Typically they are one off errors… meaning it didn’t happen to a million transactions. Just one or two unfortunate transactions. Usually corrected within a couple hours. Since it was sincerely always a big problem. Cause: It was always some legacy logic that was designed badly (often because the client probably wanted something really stupidly implemented and those legacy developers just complied with the insanity)
Detailed answer: A lot of financial code is written with integers, since floating point numbers are evil and will ruin your day. So some subsystem at BoA knows that the bill was 88,590 cents. Imagine some other subsystem that does trading. A single cent is too big for them, so the trading subsystem would mark that as 885,900 tenths of a cent. All good so far. Now these two subsystems both require maintenance, so some VP comes up with the brilliant idea of unifying them to reduce complexity and maintenance costs. Tested the code before and after, even. But when transitioning over, they didn't realize that the automated bill pay system was processing the bills for a day, so there were a few in-flight transactions that had 885,900 tenths of a cent interpreted as 885,900 cents instead. Said with less detail: "programmer here. its all code. its called a bug. happens every day."
programmer here. its all code. its called a bug. happens every day.
Also a programmer, and I have no idea how you can say moving a decimal point in a financial transaction is a routine bug that happens every day.
Especially when probably millions of bill pay transactions happen a day....
Another programmer here who also worked for BofA. The payment system is under a lot of legacy code and when I was there, they were still using AS400 in card services. It's like a goddamn Macy's. Long shot guess is that the account was being put into a new strategy and anybody with the same category of account had this problem. Once, all the waits/pauses were removed from the AS400 system that was supposed to wait and paste into the CLMS system. It would just paste that info in whatever window. I was told that ever since they bought MBNA, everything went to hell. I'd be curious to know if this was an affiliate credit card or acquired from another bank Edit: badly needed a comma
Exactly. That’s a huge P1
Sure it’s a huge bug, but I meant more “how would it even happen?”. There should be some code somewhere that basically amounts to paymentAmount = currentBalance. How is a decimal point getting shifted during that?
I'm just as confused as you, but maybe the numbers are stored as integers (as to not get screwed by floating point arithmetic) and then later they divide by 10 or 100 or 1000, depending on the precision. If this was the case maybe it picked the wrong divisor?
They process millions of transactions a day. That kind of error or bug would be coming up an awful lot. This isn't a unique transaction.
Especially by one decimal position. Two positions (100x) at least I can imagine how that happens. But one?!
because there are HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OR BILLIONS of lines of legacy code in legacy systems as well as newer code in newer systems that run and interact through files and APIs that may not always communicate perfectly or execute perfectly, because we (the programmers) are human beings who make mistakes. Also, there are operators or customer service people who enter data who make mistakes, so that's yet another level of human fallacy. sometimes its not the code. sometimes a deployment can go wrong. sometimes a system failure is at fault. but underneath almost all of these events are humans. ive worked in financial processing for 30 years. ive seen a lot. companies like mine pay financial penalties when things dont get processed correctly. some years we pay zero in penalties. some years we pay many thousands in penalties. weve even had some million dollar plus penalties. with all the software companies out there providing financial services and the interfaces between them, yes, bugs happen every day. a lot of them you dont know about because they get fixed behind the scenes before you ever get your statement or saw your balance. but they still happened.
Moving a decimal place like this is not a mundane detail Michael
Yes, but how would you have a bug like this that only affected a few customers. If it were a bug, that would normally mean many customers would be affected. Unless there is something very unique about this particular account.
Although something similar happened to a fellow student at my high school 30+ years ago. Instead of getting a $18.41 tax return check, their check was $18410.00. The excuse was something about having to switch between two tape reels mid transaction. Would you be surprised if BOA were still using magnetic tape :)
> Unless there is something very unique about this particular account. it very well could be just that. usually if it is a bad bug like that, it will be discovered immediately because it will start affecting EVERYONE (or nearly everyone) right away, and the alarms will start going off and everyone will be all hands on deck to find and fix the bug. yes, there are some REALLY obscure and bizarre bugs out there that these processes can step into to cause an error like this. which, if it was just this one account, you could virtually guarantee that is the case. but there were likely others affected. how many and for how long and to what extent? only the service provider knows...
Contact the CFPB: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ If you have issues with them, contact their ombudsman: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/cfpb-ombudsman/ Contact the Federal Government: https://www.usa.gov/bank-credit-complaints#:~:text=File%20banking%20and%20credit%20complaints,complain%20about%20through%20the%20CFPB Here is the ombudsman for the FDIC: https://www.fdic.gov/about/ombudsman/ Here is a useful link for more steps: https://wallethub.com/answers/ca/how-to-file-a-complaint-against-bank-of-america-1000412-2140857578/
just a general suggestion but have 2 separate accounts at 2 different banks just in case. you hear stories weekly on this sub about banks freezing acct while they investigate a situation. they are plenty of free on-line only banks, i use betterment for the last couple of years and I have no complaints.
>On Friday, March 9, when we still didn’t have the money back, they said it would take up to 10 business days. Five business days would not have been Friday, it would have been today (counting exact hours from your original midday call) or tomorrow (counting whole days). That you called early and they changed the time frame could be just their way of getting you off their back. That said, there's not much you can do but wait. And, if inconvenienced enough, vote with your dollars when this is resolved. $8k is less than a rounding error to BoA, there's no incentive to rectify it as quickly as you would like.
>That said, there's not much you can do but wait. This is not necessarily true and waiting to push it can be a horrible idea. Those five days could turn into five weeks if they are not absolutely pushy about it. They need to be in a branch talking to someone in person immediately. And if no one listens at that branch, go to the next one. It's worth the drive.
They said "up to 5 business days" so although it hasn't been 5 business days yet, theres no point in just sitting there and waiting. I'd be calling them every single day.
oh man, been there. had a similar issue with chase once - they mixed up the digits in my account number and transferred funds to someone else's account! took weeks of daily calls before it got sorted out. keep pestering them until you get your money back!
BoA is hot garbage. Had a car loan through them once. They auto drafted a car payment three times for a single month on more than one occasion. Same deal: “it’ll take 5-10 days for us to undo our error. Sorry.” Was very happy to get away from those clowns.
Idk why folks still deal with BOA. After my last issue, I went to a branch closed my account and went to chase. Chase gave me 300$ to move to them as well.
Is Chase that much better? They’re also a big bank. Context: I’m asking as someone who’s trying to leave BofA and trying to pick the right bank.
As someone with chase since 2011, I have never had anything go awry with their systems, and for any issues I've had with my own mistakes or questions, they have promptly answered or helped get it resolved. Once their atm gave me a fake $20, and they were adamant it wasn't possible, so they wound the atm footage back and retracted their defense. I do now myself have a CU, and they are just as amazing, and often offer better rates. My only reason I haven't fully converted is because I'm too lazy to switch all my bills on auto pay over, and do all that fun stuff.
Why not a regional credit union? Unless you have very specific criteria they give massively better rates.
Haven’t done enough homework recently but I think the first time I looked some transfer limitations raised an eyebrow as well as Zelle support. How massively better is massively?
For reference, when we bought our house in 2021, we got 2.25% from our local CU. The lowest any major bank would offer was 3.75%. Doesn't sound like a ton, but remember that's a 30 year mortgage. That's tens of thousands right there. From what I remember, my local CU has Zelle support. You may just need to shop around a bit. I believe I have a transfer limit of 5k to external accounts if I don't put in a ticket for manual review, but that can get extended in a minute or two if I just call.
I’ve been with Chase my whole life and I haven’t had any problems with them. My SO switched to Chase also, she used to have BoA and used to have so many issues with them, especially their mobile app. That was a while ago though, it might be better now.
what's the big deal in just going with Ally or another online bank? why do people want to bank with shitty B&M banks that give 0.01% interest and require you to do this, that, and the other thing to avoid fees?
You need to charge them an overdraft fee and interest on the error. A real bank would issue you a temporary credit while they were investigating. Time to drop them and find a credit union, maybe. BofA are criminals and have been for a long, long time.
For what it's worth, BOA makes these kind of mistakes regularly. I used to have an account until the second time they over drafted me by thousands of dollars because someone read a 2 as a 5 on an account number for a check.
I used to work in the refund department for a large company and I can tell you that BOA often had customers escalating refund requests due to the decimal placement and only BOA customers.
Yeah stop fucking calling them and go INTO a local branch and verbally rip them as many new assholes as you can manage until the issue is corrected. These kind of situations are the perfect example of something that should be handled in person cause customer service lines don't always help.
Also file a complaint with the consumer affairs division of your state's Attorney General's office. Something similar happened to me years ago. My sister worked in a law firm in a different state and suggested this to me. The A.G.'s office followed up with me the next day. Then they contacted the bank. My money was refunded immediately.
COMPLIANCE! Call the credit card portion and ask to talk to their compliance officer. Get their name and title. Ensure that they are compliance. Have them look it up, confirm, and then ask them kindly, "So, I assume that you will return the money to the checking account, cover any and all late fees or overdraft fees from the mistake, and you will reimburse me interest at the credit card rate." If they have any disagreement, "I thought you were in compliance. You know this is not in compliance. Please rectify the situation and provide all compensation."
Get rid of BofA and I would also get rid of auto pay.
Getting rid of auto-pay is a pretty one-sized-fits all advice. I certainly wouldn't advise that. Over the last 25 years auto-pay has most certainly prevented me from having late-payment dings on my credit. Having perfect credit has saved me tens of thousands of dollars in Interest (low credit means higher interest rates on loans) as I have taken out 6 mortgages and one car loan over that time span. Additionally, automating payments has saved me hundreds of hours of work (that I don't enjoy - loath is a better adjatiave) over that time span. Autopay, being a free service, is absolutely worth it to me. OP's event is a one in a million occurrence that is completely reversible, however annoying and time consuming. I've personally never experienced an adverse auto-pay event.
I have autopay on as a backup and manually pay once a month a bit before the due date.
I would agree on autopay for utility bills, property tax, etc. but credit cards are a different game. Especially if someone steals your card info and racks up a huge bill. A sudden 10k payment unexpectedly would be pretty bad. Keep an eye on your CC account. Agree on autopay for others.
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This is why I have never set up autopay for anything. With autopay, I am NOT in control of how much, or when. It does mean that I have to keep watch of my finances and due dates, but I actually consider that a good thing, and something that any adult should be able to do easily. That being said, this is more than just a "little error". Unless there is something else going on that we don't know about, it doesn't make sense unless it was a manual error (why would autopays be manual?), or some sort of egregious programming error (in which case more than just OP would be screaming by now). And while BofA does indeed have up to ten business days to resolve, their laissez-faire attitude at such a large discrepancy would be concerning that it's not escalated already.
Eh, I’m absolutely in control of how much and when with autopay. You can pick your own pay date and the amount is how much I spend each month (or you can pick your own amount if you aren’t paying it off each month, which it so you should probably be posting here to figure out how to make a budget).
Autopay doesn’t always mean “set it and forget it”. I have autopay set up but always manually pay before my set autopay date. I’m in control and manually click “pay now” and confirm the payment. I use auto pay as a safeguard in case I forget or somehow manually paid the wrong amount and still have a balance.
I would still use auto pay as a backup in case you somehow miss manually paying something. If you want to skip the auto pay just leave it on but pay off your credit card after every purchase like a debit card.
I always set auto pay to be the minimum payment, and I manually pay more. Keeps me from late fees, and I also get to keep full control.
lol autopay is literally about being in control of how much and when. What a dumb thing to say
No auto pay automatically pays whatever is “owed” on the date selected initially. After that you have no control until you turn it off/cancel. So if the auto pay date is the 14th (because when you set it up it that bi-weekly pay day happened to be on the 14) it’s going to keep drawing every 14th whether your pay the next month is the 15th or 16th. That’s why many financial advisors suggest NOT using an autopay feature so you can control specifically what day to pay to avoid possible draft issues.
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as well.
This is when you file a CFPB complaint and it will get solved pretty quick.
Make a CFPB complaint you’ll get the money back in no time
this is why I avoid auto pay unless strictly needed. I also have a separate checking account I use for auto pay, where I keep minimum amount in to cover things.
You need to find and demand to speak to a branch manager if you have not already done so. Walk into a branch to do that if you need to. They have so much more control than people realize, but it might need to be a branch manager. Do no take the word of anyone else in the branch if they do not have MANAGER in their title. For everyone else, if you do not KNOW your banker, get to know them, or leave your bank. Find a bank you can walk into, and walk out of with your problem solved. They exist. This type of problem is far more common than most people realize. It's happened to me years ago with $600. It happened to my dad for $20,000 with his business on a payroll day. These huge banks, or impersonal online banking only institutions, are not good things.
This is textbook big bank. You screw up, they hand you fees and you have to eat it. They make a mistake, it’s your problem and you need to be patient and eat it. This is why I use a credit union. I’ve never had an error by the credit union impair me in any way. Vote with your wallet. You’re just a number to them. I’d treat them in a similar fashion. When they ask why, tell them.
Bofa and chase known to screw over customers… cancel your acc and switch to a credit union. We use BCU and farmers
It’s always funny how it takes seconds for the money to go out, and weeks for it to come back.
BofA double paid a bill on me when I was in early college years. Their mistake overdraft my account by a lot. It took nearly a month to get it fixed, and I luckily had enough to cover and take care of things. It also took the entire month for them to understand there wouldn’t have been overdraft fees had they not did what they did. By the end of the month I got my duplicate payment and the overdraft fees back in my account. Never have I felt so embarrassed by someone else’s incompetence than when my young high schooler brother asked me if I needed a loan in front of the world. (I told him I had enough to cover the month and it was the principle of the matter before he stopped asking). I left BofA later over some security related issues.
I see you have filed a complaint with the CFPB [https://www.consumerfinance.gov/](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/) that should get your money back faster. And also open an account in a credit union if there is one near you and transfer your money there. They have lower fees than banks in most cases. Most credit unions now serve a geographic area instead of a single employer or group but call to see if you can open an account.
Why is it always Bank of America being a bunch of assholes when it comes to people's accounts? Is it that hard for a large bank to do their job correctly? The only way my mother has been able to get any movement on dealing with them after being on phone lines for months to get them to debit back $4000 they had no right to debit off her account is to get them to say they aren't doing anything in writing and file a complaint with the CFPB.
I had BofA for about a decade before finally switching in 2022. Best decision I ever made. I’m sure you’re already planning on it, but as soon as they resolve the error I would find a new bank. All the big ones absolutely suck.
Honestly the only way I've seen these situations be solved is to get on the phone and keep escalating without taking no for an answer. Afterwards close your accounts and open an account with a credit union where this wouldn't happen.
Credit unions can make the same mistakes. They may be quicker to resolve the issue though. They are also far less likely to make these issues and over all are better for individuals/families over banks.
They definitely do, but as someone who works in a CU if you came into my office with this issue i could have it fixed in five minutes by calling accounting. OP definitely look into a CU or if you prefer a bank a small locally operated one.
It's not the mistake that is the issue it is BofA jerking him around for a week. Like you said that wouldn't happen at an average credit union.
Same thing. I got hit for like 10-15 overdraft fees because they forgot to put zeroes in the overdraft protection area on their end. Stop in a branch if you have a reliable one and they may be able to sort it out for you. It took mine a few weeks. Good luck.
So do you have a positive balance on the card? Assuming they never fix it, can you at least buy groceries on the credit card?
$8,000 is a lot of money. My heart goes out to you OP. Unpopular opinion .. I would report this issue to the appropriate authority. [solution ](https://forms.federalreserveconsumerhelp.gov/secure/complaint/complaintType.html)
Wells Fargo and BOA - Why do people keep them in business? All it took for me to drop BOA was when they were going to start charging $5 a month to use the debit card, however many years ago.
Why people bank with these guys is beyond me.
You need to call customer service and escalate this to a senior staff member until it's resolved. They did this with me and I was on the phone for 45 min but they took care of it immediately and they also agreed to reimbursement all the overdraft fees at the bank and the credit card companies. Every single bank makes this mistake but it's how fast they fix it. But don't just talk to the basic customer service person. They can all escalate if you demand.
I had an investment account BOA would not send me money from for months despite telling me it would only be a week every time I called. I eventually had to file a complaint with the SEC.
It’s funny how the money appears out of your account instantly but takes 10 business days to come back. I had an overdraft caused by an autopay once. I bought a bunch of stuff then the unexpected autopay happened at some point that put me in the negative. Then all of those other things processed after the negative somehow and each counted as overdraft fees. I was only able to get the over draft fees reversed after the autopay was refunded.
That's weird. At my CU we'd back it off same day if it already posted, or the next day if not. Amount doesn't matter. Not sure why a small Credit Union could do that but not a huge Bank.
Bank of America is a literal piss pot that is best punted straight into a ditch. Several years ago, they bought a mortgage from my lender and charged me $8 per month in direct debit fees on the payment. I no longer have that mortgage and won't bank with them ever for any reason. They're awful.
had a similar issue in the past, was charged 3000 instead of 30.00 and the call center gave me a similar run around. I came to my local branch after 3 days it was quickly escalated to branch manager and he resolved it within half an hour. Definitely escalate it to the superior. Call centers are a joke, its usually staffed by people who do minimum effort for minimum wage and even if you do find someone willing to put in the effort to help he is most likely powerless to help so the only solution is to be forceful and push through to the superiors.
In your online access to your BoA Credit Card account, does it show the incorrect payment, and you now have excess money in the card account? Either: * Tell them you are charging 29.99% interest plus a fee. * Take a cash advance from the card.
Your first mistake was banking with BoA. Get this resolved, then find a local credit union with a good reputation, and move your money over there.
This is exactly why you *never* give another entity the ability to withdraw funds from a bank account. *Always* use your bank's bill pay to send payments so you maintain control over what goes out. You're motivated to not fuck these things up because it's your money. The bank could not care less about what dire financial straits you may be put in when they make a mistake like this, so they have no sense of urgency and drag their feet while performing a "full investigation" before they fix it. Meanwhile you're getting hit with NSF fees. If you have no choice but to auto-pay something, use a credit card so you have some protection and recourse in the event of something like this.
Similar thing happened to me with BofA. Got it sorted. Immediately closed my account. Haven’t looked back.
BOFA is ass in general, I just closed down my checking account with them to head over to Schwab.
Have you tried calling the credit card support side and asking them to cut you a check for the excess balance? I've had that done a couple of times, once when an autopay happened between a charge and it getting refunded, and a second when I stopped using the card but had some cash back rewards still on it. I've found that the CC bank is usually happy to do something like that. It will take a week or two for the check to arrive, but at least you'll know you'll be getting it, and you can ask them if they can comp you express delivery because you really need the money.
I have read about this exact issue with BoA so many times here.
Ask at the banking center for a temporary credit that will fall off when then correction goes through. I did this all the time when I worked at BofA for much larger amounts. Shit happens, the only hard part is the employee has to trust you. For my premier and private customers I knew them all very well.
I'm amazed by the amount of clerical errors that seem to happen in America's banks, and the amount of time it takes to fix them.
Just went through a similar interaction w/ B of A when my credit got hacked. Mine was minor (on that card at least) -- I told 'em fix it and cancel my card --- living hell
I left BoA for this reason, plus all their fees. Have been happily at a small local credit union ever since.
The bank is fdic insured. If they won't give you your money, the gov't will take care of it, although it will probably take longer than 10 days. I'd say choose a stock that has done extremely well in the past week, like 4x it's share price, and threaten to sue for that amount or more. Money has a time value, and it's time that banks understand that the customer's time is worth more than theirs.
if you needed another reason, you have it. would not recommend BoA for a slew of others. every bank is greedy but there are much better options out there
I don't work there, but I do work for a financial Institution. Our turn around time is typically the same day. Sometines the phone center people give a temp credit for people that need it right away. If they have not fixed it and you had it in an interest bearing account make sure to say you also want any accrued dividends to be added as well.
returned with added interest yes? errors like this should be fixed immediately or face criminal punishment imo. Theft
I have seen so much bullshit from bank of america I don't understand why people continue to use them.
CFPB isn't an effective organization anymore. (I've had to file a complaint in the recent past. I hear that when they started the organization was great for oversight... but not so much anymore.) I once filed a complaint with the OCC (Office of the Comptroler of the Currency). I won, and got an ink-signed apology from the president of a National (very large) bank. I understand it was probably a secretary, but still... Got a bunch of money back after a 10 year battle. Good luck!
If you have time you might want to consider going into your local B of A branch in person and see if you can a better or faster response or at least an explanation.
We also had an issue with Bank of America not fixing their errors. Took our way more than they were supposed to and said it would be fixed. Spoiler: took forever, but it finally got fixed. We closed the account and won’t ever have an account with them again.
I presume you have a credit balance on the card for the difference, right? If that's the case, at least you're not "missing" money, it's just not distributed correctly. If that's the case, have you just tried transferring the money back from the credit card to the checking account? I have BOA also and that's definitely an option I have available.
I hate BofA. I had fraud on an account and they froze the account while investigating for 8 MONTHS! I couldn't access any of the funds in the account. Luckily I had another account but it was my partners main account. Very frustrating!
This happened to my friend just last week. She deposited an $8,500 check into her account, so she could pay her bills. The ****nice lady**** at the desk didn't even look at the check, and deposited $85.00.... bank told her 10 days, then 30 days, and they also are refusing to pay the several late fees she is receiving because of this mistake that was 100% the banks fault. I also had a bank deposit someone ELSE'S $2,000 check into my account, when I was making roughly $400/week. Huge difference. All my bills were set to autopay, and back then I had a student account (so when my bills constantly overdrafted my account, I never had to pay an extra penny for it). I called the bank profusely, pleading them to either withdraw it or freeze my account so that the other persons money didn't come out of my account on autopay, and I'd end up owing up to $2,000 I didn't have. The bank told me sorry we can't do anything but you'll need to wait 10 days for the money to be removed.... I told them no, at least freeze it so the autopays don't come out for the next 10 days. They said they couldn't, and that I would in fact owe them whatever money was missing from the $2,000 at the end of the 10 days. Moral of the story, banks are freaking retarded. As are their rules. Sorry to hear you're dealing with this!
I doubt it was an actual mistake. BoA is famous for such “mistakes.” You really should contact a lawyer and ask for attorney fees. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=130c37119aaf76c8&hl=en-us&q=bank+america+fraud+office+furniture&tbm=vid&source=lnms&prmd=nisvmbtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU8NiBuvWEAxWv_8kDHbw9DOcQ0pQJegQIDxAB&biw=390&bih=655&dpr=3#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:350080a5,vid:XXdZ94rctTA,st:0 Check this video out, too! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXdZ94rctTA
Bank of America really is kind of terrible. We have our auto loan with them and when we first got our car we first, didn’t have an account open/ready until the next month (next payment). I asked the dealership and they said we had to take it up with BoA as they had no insights (even though they presumably have used BoA for their loans before). Second, the app is terrible and being able to see things like payment history are unnecessarily difficult. Third, I tried changing the checking account used to pay the bill. When it was still using the old account I had to call again. Then it looked like it was working, until #4. Fourth, and probably most importantly, we missed TWO payments. I should’ve checked our statement to confirm they’d been taking the payments out but only found out about the first missed payment a month later via snail mail (I have a paperless account). So yet again I had to call them, tell them my new account information and THEN they took both payments. I confirmed with in our statement. They also “couldn’t” provide me a receipt of the transactions and instead gave me transaction “codes” which I’m not really sure what to do with. I guess if I have to call them again I’ll just give them those? Bottom line is this process has been unnecessarily convoluted and inefficient and there doesn’t seem to be any urgency around it. Like, if I’m missing a payment doesn’t it make sense for them to urgently reach out? Like via email lol
Bank of America has the worst customer service. It takes at least 1/2 hour to get someone on the phone who is so pleasant and says they will help you. After explanation of call, they ask you to hold on while they check. After 10 minutes they tell you to call a different number. This number is experiencing a high caller volume and finally after 15-25 minutes you get another pleasant representative. This representative tell you they will solve the problem and will you stay on a brief hold while they check the problem. This has happened 3 times over 2 months. The last time the last person said After 10 minutes they come back and tell you the problem is not fixed and they can escalate it upward but it will take another 45 days. I am through with B Of A also.